WHEAT AND ITS PRODUCTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25799, 21 March 1945, Page 6

WHEAT AND ITS PRODUCTS

Sir —The decision notified in your issue of Saturday by the joint meeting of the Wheat and Flour Controller, Mr R. McPherson, the Director of Primary Production, the chief poultry instructor and representatives of the Poultry Board, ieserving all wheat, bran, pollard, and other wheaten products for the sole use of the poultry industry is doubtless gratifying to the poultry farmers, but it is a very grave breach of the agreement existing between the wheatgrawers and the Wheat Board. When farmers were appealed to to grow wheat last autumn, no suggestion was made that any embargo would be put upon the use of wheat offal by the Frower, but we are now faced with an order prohibiting our personal dealing with anyone but poultry keepers for the disposal of seconds and thirds wheat, and debarred from our annual purchase of essential foodstuffs such as pollard and bran—direct products of the wheat we g row —and this, for the benefit of those engaged in poultry production, who, Mr McPherson states, must depend on wheat products for best results, whereas feeders of other live stock have a much wider range to choose from. I would ask what substitute for bran for young or sick stock, or for pollards, or crushed •• seconds,” for pig feeding and fattening, are there, and where these suggested substitutes are obtainable? In any case, surely the growers of a commodity such as wheat should, in equity, have priority of use, and purchase, when they have fulfilled their implied contract of growing the wheat for human consumption. I personally would not plough good hay land to grow wheat for poultry. If we are to be deprived of the right to buy offal for farm stock, or the right to sell it to our neighbours, then I prefer to return to the less risky and more profitable, as well as less worrying, business of simply grazing and fattening for the market. —I

am. etc., W. D. Mason. Middlemareh, Mar. 17.